She Built a Group Practice in Four Years Without Quitting Her Job First
Most business advice tells you to leap. Burn the boats. Go all in.
Susan Henriques did the opposite and built something that now runs without her.
In this episode of FoundHer Rising, Christine Hakkola sits down with the founder of New Horizons Child and Adolescent Psychology Services to talk about the four-year slow pivot from school board psychologist to private practice owner to group practice leader. What emerges isn’t a story about hesitation. It’s a story about precision.
Change Happens at the Speed of Safety
Susan spent 17 years at the school board before making any moves toward private practice. Her first step wasn’t leaving, it was cutting back. She transitioned to a part-time family health team position to learn how a practice actually runs: the scheduling systems, the admin support, the physical environment of seeing patients in your own space.
That exposure was the foundation on which her private practice was built. Not courage. Not a dramatic leap. Structured, low-risk learning.
Her mantra throughout the entire transition? “Change happens at the speed of safety.”
For founders who feel pressure to move faster than they’re ready to, this reframe matters. Speed is not the measure of seriousness. The measure is whether the next step is solid.
The Moment That Changed Everything
Sometimes growth starts not with a decision, but with someone seeing what you can’t see in yourself.
For Susan, that moment came unexpectedly. She had rented her office to a colleague for a day she wasn’t using it. In the middle of a casual conversation, that colleague looked her in the eye and said four words: “You need to grow.”
Nobody had said it to her directly before. She went home and told her husband: that’s it. I have to do something.
It’s a reminder that the right conversation at the right moment can compress years of internal resistance into a single decision. Sometimes growth doesn’t begin with clarity. It begins with being seen.
From Solo Practice to Small Group: The Real Mechanics
When Susan’s solo practice filled up, she didn’t panic and hire fast. She did what she does with everything: she moved step by step.
Here’s what that looked like in practice:
She hired two assessment consultants — one at a time — both of whom she already knew and trusted. Then she brought on a child therapist to handle therapy clients. All four team members are part-time. The practice functions as a collaborative whole.
The result? A practice that, in Susan’s words, “kind of runs on its own.”
This didn’t happen because she got lucky with hires. It happened because she understood a principle Christine articulates clearly in this episode: trust comes before letting go — not after.
The instinct many founders have is to hire, hand things off, and then build trust over time. Susan’s experience points in the opposite direction. She hired people she already knew. She communicated the mission and the standards explicitly. She built the relationship before the delegation, not after.
Systems Are Not Optional — They’re the Lifeline
When Christine asks what’s kept the practice sustainable, Susan’s answer is immediate: systems.
Time blocking. Clear team boundaries. Admin support. These aren’t glamorous. But they’re what allowed Susan to keep her school board position two and a half days a week, build a group practice, and avoid becoming the bottleneck in her own business.
She also names something important: she burned out last fall. She took on too much in a season of expansion.
Christine identifies a pattern she sees consistently across the women she coaches. When a business becomes temporarily unstable — new offerings, new hires, new financial unknowns — the instinct is to compensate with effort. More work. More availability. More time. The very strategy meant to create stability ends up accelerating burnout.
The solution isn’t more work. It’s better structure. Systems don’t limit what a practice can do. They’re what make a practice durable enough to keep doing it.
The Most Important Question Nobody Asks About Growth
Late in the conversation, Christine introduces a concept that lands quietly but hits hard.
Every business has a set point — a size and structure at which it is most profitable, most sustainable, and most aligned with why it was built in the first place. Not every business is meant to grow infinitely. Not every practice should pursue seven figures. Some businesses function best, and serve best, at a carefully held scale.
For Susan, the indicator is simple: no long wait lists. When someone reaches out for support, New Horizons can see them quickly. In the mental health field, that immediacy is the entire point. Scaling past that sweet spot wouldn’t improve the practice — it would compromise the thing that makes it valuable.
This is a direct challenge to the ambient pressure many founders feel to always be growing, always be scaling, always be reaching for the next level. Intentional stabilization is a legitimate strategy. Knowing your set point is a form of leadership.
What to Take From Susan’s Story
A few things stand out from this conversation for any founder navigating growth decisions:
The pace of your transition can be a feature, not a bug. Susan’s four-year approach to leaving the public sector wasn’t avoidance. It was precision.
External recognition can unlock internal permission. “You need to grow” was the sentence that moved Susan forward. Don’t underestimate the value of being seen by someone whose perspective you trust.
Build trust before you delegate, not instead of it. Control doesn’t have to disappear — it has to evolve. Hire people you know, communicate your standards, then release incrementally.
Systems are not optional. If you love your work, it will bleed into everything without them. Structure is what gives the work a container.
Growth is not a moral obligation. Know your set point. Serve it well.
Listen to the Full Episode
Susan’s story is one of the clearest illustrations of what intentional growth actually looks like in practice. Not slow because of fear. Slow because she knew exactly what she was building and why.
Tune in to Episode 24 of FoundHer Rising wherever you listen to podcasts. If you’re building something in wellness, coaching, or consulting and you’re ready to have an honest conversation about what scaling actually looks like for you — Christine would love to meet you. Apply to be a guest at the link in the show notes. Visit HakkolaHorizons.com to learn more.
Full Transcript
Christine Hakkola: Welcome to FoundHer Rising, the podcast for women founders in wellness, coaching, and consulting who are ready to build businesses that create freedom, impact, and income. I’m your host, Christine Hakkola, business coach, former psychotherapist, and mentor to women scaling service-based businesses.
Today I’m joined by Susan Henriques, a psychologist and founder of New Horizons Child and Adolescent Psychology Services in Oakville. She supports children, adolescents, and families through assessment and therapy, helping parents and educators understand learning, behavior, and mental health. Susan, welcome to the show.
Susan Henriques: Thank you, Christine. I’m really honored to be here today.
Christine Hakkola: I’m so excited to have you. We go way back — many years — and I always cherish the moments we get to connect. Let’s go back. You choose where to start. Tell us a little bit about what was happening in your life when you decided to start New Horizons.
Susan Henriques: The story goes back to about 2019. I was working full time at the school board and continuing part time as a school psychologist. I was needing a change from the public sector and from primarily assessment-focused work. My first step was to take on a position at a family health team — I cut back on the school position to do that half time. In hindsight, that was a really important stepping stone for going into private practice.
Christine Hakkola: What do you feel like it gave you?
Susan Henriques: Because nobody teaches you how to run a business. At the family health team, we had a secretary, it was appointment-based, I was working with other mental health clinicians and physicians. I had my own office. Patients came to see me. There was a waiting room. It felt like real exposure to how a practice is run.
Christine Hakkola: Smart.
Susan Henriques: And in terms of clinical training and growth, it was huge. I was seeing much more complex cases there than I had at the school board. It was a job-share position, and my colleague was very experienced. I learned so much from her. I was really blessed. But after about five years, the role was still assessment-based. I felt a strong pull to go beyond assessment — to use it as a starting point and carry those results forward with the same clients. Families who finally have answers to challenges they’ve been dealing with deserve continuity. I wanted to be the one to provide it. That wasn’t the model at either the school board or the family health team.
Christine Hakkola: You wanted to be more hands-on with the treatment and support them through the full process.
Susan Henriques: Exactly. And I want to preface this by saying the school board gave me an incredibly solid foundation — amazing supervision, mentorship, professional development. I highly recommend it to anyone starting out. But the edge came. I call it the midlife shift.
In 2019, I was about 48. The shift needed to happen for several reasons. It wasn’t just the client work. I wanted more flexibility in my week, more control over time off. And honestly, I wanted to move my body more. Our work is very sedentary. In assessment especially, you sit for hours. I actually developed heavy leg syndrome from sitting in clinic chairs.
Christine Hakkola: Oh my gosh.
Susan Henriques: So when I made the pivot — and I should mention I was moonlighting in private practice for a while — this happened over a four-year period.
Christine Hakkola: Change happens at the speed of safety.
Susan Henriques: That was my mantra. Some people take a big leap and leave everything at once. That was not me. Change is not easy for me.
Christine Hakkola: Talk me through some of the fears that led you to shifting into private practice so slowly. What were you afraid would happen if you moved too fast?
Susan Henriques: I had been at the school board for 17 years. That’s a lot of security. I was raising a family. So I took calculated risks because I knew I was going to be okay. My husband told me: just try it. If it doesn’t work out, you can go back. I had a safety net. A safety blanket, really. And so I took the leap.
After five years at the family health team — another wonderful environment — in 2023, I made the full transition. It caused a lot of anxiety. In a span of one or two months, we launched my daughter off to university, I had my website redesigned, I incorporated the business, and set up an online billing platform. So much change all at once.
Christine Hakkola: What were the biggest shifts you noticed right away — personally and professionally — once you put your full energy into your own business?
Susan Henriques: The biggest shift was the mindset. I was no longer just a clinician. Now I was a business owner too. That’s a full-time job on top of the clinical work. But this whole journey has been a passion project. My brain responded really well to the creativity of it. I started listening to podcasts, talking to coaches, had a couple of calls with you — instrumental and transformational.
And there was a specific moment that really propelled things forward. I had rented my office space to another clinician on a day I wasn’t using it. She came in, looked around, and I learned she was actually looking for space for one of her interns. So here I am thinking — you’re using my office to grow your practice. And she looked me in the eye and said, “You need to grow.”
Christine Hakkola: Wow.
Susan Henriques: Nobody had ever said that to me directly like that. I went home and told my husband: that’s it. I have to do something. I have to grow. You’ve said similar things to me, Christine. I’ve heard it over and over. But that moment landed differently.
Christine Hakkola: I want to put a pin in the growth topic for a moment. You mentioned previously that there was a point — I think it was a January — where you felt you got in over your head. Things weren’t working the way you wanted. You had to step back and shift your schedule. Do you remember that?
Susan Henriques: Yes — I think that was before I took the bigger leap to expand. I needed physical space first. As a psychologist, the environment I work in matters deeply to me. In the public sector, offices can feel dry and clinical — plastic chairs, no warmth. I needed to create something different.
Christine Hakkola: For those watching, you can see the warmth in the space behind her right now. Very different energy from what you’re describing in the corporate sector.
Susan Henriques: Exactly. After so many years, I was done. And it wasn’t just the space. It was the time freedom, the financial control over my future, being able to get up and move throughout the day. Those were all really important pieces.
Christine Hakkola: You’re now not just doing one-on-one work anymore. Tell us what your business looks like today.
Susan Henriques: I’ve grown from a sole practitioner to a small group practice.
Christine Hakkola: I read something in what you submitted, but we haven’t spoken about it yet. Tell me everything.
Susan Henriques: I was getting more service requests than I could take on — I was full. Meanwhile I was listening to podcasts and learning how people were building practices like this. So I took small, step-by-step growth changes. I hired two consultants for assessments — one at a time, both very experienced, people I’ve known for years. I’ve also hired a child therapist to take on some of the therapy clients. All four of us are part time in the practice. It works beautifully. We’re all thriving.
Christine Hakkola: What do you love most about your business as it is today?
Susan Henriques: I love arriving to my office. I love providing that space for my clients. I have two mornings a week that are just for me — for movement. I’ve started weightlifting, working with a personal trainer. And I love having a team. A fear I hear often is the fear of being alone in your own business, being in a silo. I’ve countered that by building people around me within the practice itself.
Christine Hakkola: What has been challenging? Either things you didn’t expect or things you have to constantly navigate?
Susan Henriques: Systems. They have been the lifeline. I didn’t always have good systems because when I was solo, I didn’t need them. But as the business grew, I had to become very structured — using time blocking, protecting my schedule at the school board, and asking for help. One of my associates handles some of the admin work now, which has been instrumental. The work does bleed into evenings sometimes. But it’s come a long way. I communicate my boundaries to my team clearly and I respect theirs too.
Christine Hakkola: Before we keep going — if you’re listening and thinking, “I’m in that season right now,” I’d love to talk to you. FoundHer Rising isn’t about polished success stories. It’s about real growth — hiring decisions, revenue plateaus, the identity shifts that happen when your business starts stretching you. If you’re building something meaningful in wellness, coaching, or consulting, and you’re willing to have an honest conversation about what scaling actually looks like, apply to be a guest. The link is in the show notes.
Okay, back to the episode. Would you say that building systems and delegating — not becoming the bottleneck — has been one of the most important pieces of this journey?
Susan Henriques: One hundred percent. If you love your practice the way I love mine, it will bleed into everything. At the end of the day, I have to go home to my family.
Christine Hakkola: What other demands have come up unexpectedly?
Susan Henriques: When business presents itself, there’s always an urgency to take it. As you become known, people want more from you. Last fall, I burned out a bit. I took on too much. Especially at the beginning, because when you’re expanding, you don’t know what your financials are going to look like, so you overcompensate. And then eventually I said: no. Not doing that again.
Christine Hakkola: You noticed it quickly and course-corrected. I see this show up constantly for women business owners. The most vulnerable window is usually right when a business starts to expand — new contractors, new offerings, new risk. The business becomes unstable temporarily. Money goes out before it comes back in. That creates fear. So we do what’s comfortable, which is usually more time and more work. We accidentally spread ourselves too thin trying to create stability through effort. And it can actually make things worse.
Susan Henriques: Yes. I’m very mindful now of how much I take on. And I can sometimes hear your voice going, “Susan, you’re keeping small.” But I can’t grow at this particular moment. The growth is inevitable — it’ll likely accelerate when I retire from the school board. But slow and steady is the right pace for me right now. I did this for more control, more time, more fluidity. I’m keeping that in mind.
Christine Hakkola: How has this focus on your “why” shown up as you’ve grown as a leader — now that you’re bringing on other clinicians?
Susan Henriques: The hardest part was relinquishing control and communicating our mission and vision clearly to the team. Our integrity is everything. We respond to clients in a compassionate, timely way. We are present. Learning to hold that standard while also having genuine compassion for my team — that’s been the work of leadership for me.
Christine Hakkola: This topic comes up constantly in my coaching. People come in believing that to be a good leader, you just have to let go. But letting go is not what comes first. Building trust is. We build trust, then we let go. It’s iterative. Some degree of trust — that this is the right person for the right role — has to exist before we can release control. And then that trust grows alongside our ability to let go.
Susan Henriques: You said exactly what I was trying to convey. And I’ll add — my first two therapists didn’t stay as long as I wanted. By the third hire, I was more explicit about the vision: the plan is for you to grow with us. I got clear about what I was looking for.
Christine Hakkola: Where do you see this heading? What’s the dream for New Horizons?
Susan Henriques: Right now I’m genuinely relishing what this practice has become. It’s a machine that kind of runs on its own. I’ve built a brand in my community, and I’m growing within it. What I’m most proud of is that I’ve created income and opportunity for three other people. That, to me, is extraordinary.
Looking ahead, I’d like to hire a couple more people and run some groups. But I don’t have the schedule bandwidth yet. I’m also considering delegating the actual testing in the near future — a model many practices use that I haven’t embraced yet. When I retire from the school board, I can lean fully into this. I’ve built something that will carry me and my associates forward.
Christine Hakkola: Last question. There’s a tension I see in a lot of founders — they’ve built something great and they’re either growing it slowly on purpose or feeling pressure to scale because that’s what everyone else seems to be doing. What would you say to someone at that cusp?
Susan Henriques: Look at how the growth will be beneficial and weigh the cost to your time, stress level, and sustainability. If you hire, how capable will that person be of taking on the work independently — not relying heavily on you? Consider the growth, but evaluate both the positive and negative impacts honestly.
Christine Hakkola: I had a mentor tell me that every business has a kind of set point — where it functions best and is most profitable and sustainable. Not every business is meant to grow infinitely. What do you think about that?
Susan Henriques: Right now we’re running really well. I don’t have long wait lists. When someone reaches out, we can see them within a reasonable timeframe. In this field, when people need support, they need it now — not in six months. New Horizons has always been able to provide that. We’re at a sweet spot. Whether that stabilizes or continues to grow slowly, I’m tuned in to it.
Christine Hakkola: It sounds like whether it stabilizes or grows slowly and consciously, you’re paying attention. Susan, this has been such a pleasure. For listeners who want to learn more about New Horizons — what’s the best way to reach you?
Susan Henriques: Visit my website at www.newhorizonspsychology.ca and reach out through there. I’m also on LinkedIn.
Christine Hakkola: Fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing your balanced, clear, and genuinely peaceful journey. I know it hasn’t been perfect and the challenges were real, but the clarity you bring is rare and so valuable.
Thank you, listener, for tuning in to FoundHer Rising. If today’s episode resonated with you, follow the show, share it with another founder, and leave a quick review. It helps more women find these conversations. Connect with me on LinkedIn or learn more at HakkolaHorizons.com. Until next time, keep rising — and keep building the business that gives you the freedom to live, lead, and create on your terms.
